In a spectacular judicial reversal, the Paris Court of Appeal has found Air France and Airbus guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the 2009 Rio-Paris flight crash, declaring them “solely and exclusively responsible” for the now deadly French aviation accident.
The two companies, which had been acquitted at the first trial of the case and denied any criminal responsibility, were sentenced to the heavier penalty of a 225,000 euro fine for the crash that killed 228 people. The sentence is symbolic and tarnishes the image of the two companies.
Air France has been found guilty of failing to train pilots to deal with the Pitot freezers, which measure the speed of the aircraft’s exterior, nor did it ensure that crews were adequately briefed, something the airline has denied.
Abus is accused by the French judiciary of underestimating the seriousness of the wind measurement detector failures and failing to take the necessary steps to inform airlines urgently, which the company has denied.
After seeking and winning acquittals for the airline and the construction company in the first trial, the prosecution reversed course after two months of a second-degree trial in the fall and sought their conviction for the crash that went down in history with a photo of the detached tricolour tail fin of the aircraft floating in the Atlantic Ocean.
“There was nothing, no sincere reason for comfort. It was a granite defensive posture. A single word sums up this whole charade: indecency,” the two prosecutors had said during their closing arguments. “Sixteen years to come up with nonsense and to pull arguments out of a sleeve or a hat. This is unacceptable on the part of a company.”
On 1 June 2009, flight AF447 between Rio de Janeiro and Paris crashed overnight in the Atlantic Ocean a few hours after take-off, killing 216 passengers and 12 crew members. The aircraft, an A330, was carrying people of 33 different nationalities, including 72 French and 58 Brazilians.
